Don't Die In Spring

Don’t let go of me until sometime in that darkened end of November

There’s far too much light out here for me in March even if it is still snowing

Let them take you away when the sun is pallid and the days grow ever shorter

Don’t even try to push me aside when the wet snows nurture our new grass

I’ll gladly go when the ground is all brown and frozen and everything else is dead

Who could take off when the crocuses are just starting to peek out?

I’ll be ready to leave just as the lakes are freezing gray in that flat December light

I want you to be there listening when the redwing blackbirds return to fill the brush

Don’t die in the Spring when your sap is just rising after a long winter’s stillness

Wait until autumn shuts everything down into a depressed and muffled dimness

Stay with me as the streams throw off their ice and the aspen buds grow fat

Slip away quietly beneath heavy covers during some long, cold winter’s night

You cant leave just when the grebes, geese, ducks and mergansers are returning

Say goodbye when your garden is skeletal and the icy fog settles in before the snows

Why survive the long winter just to wither when at last the good light returns?

Don’t let go until the cold and dark infinitely lengthen both of our fleeing shadows

You simply can’t turn away from the fully-refreshed beauty of early May

We’ll lay you down during one of those savage early winter blizzards

We won’t let you go when the bass are bedding out on the pond

Wait for that dark and somber time before you decide upon your last move

Don’t leave me to futilely struggle against the rising tide of spring, in sadness over you

Let me walk dark streets alone during the time when grief and depression come naturally

Don’t die in the spring when the garden is calling out for your touch

I would rather think of you still hard at work, helping to push up our new bulbs